China's most well-known AIDS activist was released
from jail September 20 after admitting he'd made a
"mistake," he said.

Wan Yanhai was detained August 24 for widely e-mailing a
leaked government report on thousands of farmers in
Henan province who were infected with HIV by selling
their blood to unsanitary, government-sanctioned blood
collectors in the late 1980s to mid 1990s.

Wan has said up to 2 million people may have been
infected in similar circumstances.

"I admitted wrongdoing and I asked the government for
leniency, so that is why I think they let me go," Wan
told Agence France-Presse. "I think the whole ordeal
is over, but in this society there are many things
that are not up to me to decide."
Sweden Elects Five Gays to Parliament

Swedes elected five gay men to parliament September 15.

Twenty-seven gays and lesbians were elected to local
government posts.

The gay MPs are incumbent Tasso Stafilidis of the Left
Party, representing Helsingborg; Martin Andreasson of
the Liberal Party, representing Stockholm; Ulf Holm of
the Green Party, representing the university town of
Lund; Börje Vestlund of the Social Democratic Party,
representing Stockholm; and Tobias Billström, of the
Moderate Party, representing Malmö.

Vestlund and Andreasson have a long history as
activists with the gay organization RFSL, the National
Federation for Sexual Equality.

"It is possible to be an out LGBT person and at the
same time a politician without any negative
consequences," said RFSL President Sören Andersson.
"It is very important that the parliament has out LGBT
members. [It] mean[s] extra support for MPs who
already today are supporting LGBT issues."

The Social Democrats will continue in power, working
in coalition with the Left and Green parties.

Swedish gay activists have five current goals, said
Jon Voss, editor of the gay newspaper QX: To ban
discrimination via the constitution, to reform the
nation's draconian HIV-transmission laws, to abolish a
law that criminalizes encouraging patrons at saunas to
have sex, to open up hospital-based artificial
insemination to lesbians, and to merge the marriage
and registered-partnership laws into one law.

Swedish registered partnership grants more than 99
percent of the rights and obligations of marriage, but
it is not called marriage and gay couples cannot get
married under the laws straight couples use.

"We expect that all remaining negative treatment of
gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons
in current legislation will be removed," said RFSL's
Andersson.